September 27, 2010. Another new addition to the lab group, Morgan Raven has started as a new PhD student in the ESE program. Morgan will be working with me on compound-specific S isotope fractionations in marine organic matter.
September 1, 2010. Postdocs galore! Tomaso has finished up and moved back to Switzerland. Xinning Zhang, Jake Waldbauer, and Guillaume Paris have all started. You can read about their research under the 'people' tab.
July 21, 2010. Alon Amrani, Jess Adkins, and myself have been awarded the Organic Geochemistry Division's 2009 Best Paper award for our work developing compound-specific sulfur isotope analyses. You can see the paper (and judge for yourself) here.
May 15, 2010. I learned today that Caltech has decided to give me tenure. Pretty amazing. I'm speechless.
March 15, 2010. The GPS division here at Caltech finally posted a picture of me on their web page that doesn't look like I'm 15 years old. Hooray! Check it out here. Now if they could photoshop out those gray hairs...
March 1, 2010. Two new papers out. The first is the work of Sarah Feakins, and explores the physical basis for leafwax D/H fractionations in an arid ecosystem. The second is a collaboration with colleagues at U.C. Riverside, in which we propose a new model for ocean sulfur chemistry in the Precambrian Doushantuo.
January 1, 2010. Started off the new decade with a new addition to the lab. Eva Niedermeyer joins the group as a postdoc, working on leafwax D/H paleoclimate records from the tropics. Eva comes to us from the University of Bremen (Germany), where she got her PhD in paleoclimate.
September 30, 2009. Ying Wang passed her thesis defense today! The title is "Equilibrium 2H/1H Fractionations in Organic Molecules." Next month, when she is done polishing up the thesis, she will begin work as a postdoc at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institute of Washington. She's my very first student to finish, and it feels a bit like sending my oldest child off to college.
August 4, 2009. A bunch of new papers coming out, both from my group and from collaborations with others. See the Library section for details. Extra props to Xinning Zhang, whose paper on D/H fractionations in microbial heterotrophs ended up as the Feature Article in this week's edition of PNAS. And I got to supply the cover art - a picture of a microbial mat from a Yellowstone hot spring. My mum would be so proud...
May 5, 2009. All kinds of good news to report. Maggie has been awarded an NSF graduate student fellowship. Ying has received a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Carnegie Institute of Washington. Ashley and Ying have both gotten engaged!
October 17, 2008. Maggie passed her qualifying exam! No surprise to us, but kudos anyway to Maggie for doing a great job.
October 15, 2008. Two new postdocs have joined the group. Roberta Hansman comes to us from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, where she recently completed her PhD with Lihini Aluwihare. Roberta will be trying to use our SWiM interface to look at carbon sources in marine microbial communities. Tomaso Bontognali arrives from ETH in Zurich, where he did his PhD working on carbonate deposition with Judie Mackenzie. He will be working collaboratively with me, John Grotzinger, and Victoria Orphan trying to understand how to find and quantify morphologic and chemical signatures associated with ancient microfossils.
September 1, 2008. Maggie Osburn has joined our research group as a 2nd year PhD student. She is currently working on lipid D/H fractionations in microbial mats from Yellowstone National Park. Postdoc Sarah Feakins is off to USC, where she is starting up her own research group as an assistant professor.
July 18, 2008. Two members of our group received awards at this years' Goldschmidt meeting. Alon Amrani received the IAG's Early Career Award for his work on compound-specific S isotopic analyses. Ying Wang received a Best Student Presentation award for her work on equilibrium D/H fractionations in organic compounds. Congrats to Ying and Alon!
July 1, 2008. Ms. Lichun Zhang has joined us as our new Laboratory Manager. Lichun comes to us from Duke University, where she was a researcher in their Cancer Research Center.
March 1, 2008. Our paper on D/H ratios of marine particulate organic matter (POM) has finally appeared in the journal Organic Geochemistry, in the special volume in honor of John Hayes. Ashley Jones is the first author of the paper.
January 17, 2008. Its a boy! Sarah Feakins (and her husband Mike) are the proud new parents of Dylan Alexander Feakins. We haven't seen any photos yet...